Pat recalls an eventful life in Offaly and Laois

I am from Lockclose, the eldest of five siblings, Mary, Tom, Johnny and Jimmy. My mother Sadie Dunne was from Ballinvalley and my father Tom Feery from Castlebrack. Growing up we had great neighbours and still do, my mother’s sister Bridge Hinch lived next door to us with her husband Fint and family.

Sadly, my father passed away, beside me at a hurling match between Killeigh and Coolderry in Kilcormac in 1975 from a heart attack, it was a terrible shock for us all, at that time no one knew much about CPR and there was no such thing as a defibrillator.

The road we live on now used to be the main road and I remember when the new main road was being built behind our houses. It went through Corbets land so there was a pass way built between the houses so that the Corbets could farm both sides of the road. We were then able to play on the road where we are now as there was very little traffic on it, spending most of our time playing football, hurling and hunting rabbits. Our house was a great house for card players, we would have a lot of the neighbours come in to play cards. As we got older a lot of time was taken up with rearing turf and picking potatoes.

I served mass as a young boy and it was great to serve at a funeral. The mass would be at 11 am and the burial would take place at 2pm so you would get a couple of hours off school, one funeral I served at I was brought back to the grieving family's home between the mass and burial and was given lemonade and kimberly biscuits, sure it was great as I missed almost the whole day in school and got a great treat into the bargain.

My mother told me that she went to school in a building on or near where the school is now and there was a quarry in the vicinity and when they were blasting in the quarry the pupils in the school had to take cover in case there was an explosion.

I went to Killeigh school, now the GAA buildings and then I went to the Vocational School in Tullamore. I remember one school tour when we were in second year, we would only have been fourteen or fifteen at the time and we went down to the River Shannon in Athlone. As part of the tour, we went on a river cruise on a boat called the St. Kieran, but before we went on the cruise, four of us from the class, Paddy, Sheila, Ann and myself decided to hire a rowboat and off we went in the middle of the Shannon with Paddy working away at the oars. When we came back our teacher Pat Byrne was not too happy with us and gave us an exercise that evening to write a report about why we should have not gone out on the rowboat.

The first of November was a big day in the shooting calendar and for weeks before hand, Kilroy’s shop in High Street, Tullamore had a display of shotguns and rifles in their window and as kids we would stand staring at them longing for a gun. One year I was paying off the price of a gun every week, but my father thought that I was too young for one, so my mother and father went and got paint for the house for the amount that I had paid off. In fairness to my father, he did buy me one a few years later.

We had a wonderful life and very happy times, it all stemmed from friends and neighbours and the arguing and slagging between this and that, but it was always in good nature. We would head off shooting together. One day I had a dog that was a bit wild and the little “so so” put the pheasants up left right and centre, I said “isn't it great to see a dog working” but one of my teammates says” that’s it I’m off home”, I think he wasn’t too impressed with my dog.

I was a member of Macra for many years and it was great club and great times. There was everything going on, dances, tours, amateur dramatics, public speaking. Some nights there would be a line of cars parked up both sides of the road it would be that busy. Macra Na Feirme gave us a great send off in life and gave us great confidence. They treated you well, they would bring you onto a working committee. There was great leadership and chairmen down through the years, Willie O’Rourke (RIP) Ballinasragh, Michael Dunne (RIP) Quarrymount and Brian O’Rourke (RIP) Ballinasragh to name but a few and in my day there was PJ Kinnarney, all great men. You would spend a few hours doing work and then you would be let into a dance for free. My mother and her sister Bridge made the tea and served us from the supper room for many years and Dick White kept the cloakroom.

There was also the August Monday sports which were held on the green it also had a cinder cycle track where the cyclists would do laps for five miles. The sports brought top class runners and cyclists from all over the country and you would see all sorts of bikes and motor bikes parked up all over the village.

The origin of the Macra Hall was built from the proceeds from the marquee. The last marquee that took place blew down and there never was one hired again for the village as the marquees were dying out by that stage, in Tullamore there was the Harriers, Central Ballroom, GAA centre and the Golden Harp and unfortunately they took some of the activity away from the Macra Hall in Killeigh.

After I finished school, I went working for local farmers, but my first full time job was with Michael Dunne (RIP) from Lockclose, building Phelan’s house beside him. I went from that to Cappincur joinery where we made furniture and windows and I spent thirteen years there.

The first dance in the Macra hall I wasn’t let go as I was too young but some time later, it was in the Macra hall that I would meet the love of my life when I met Teresa Barrett from Clonaslee on a St. Patrick’s night. We were later married on the 18th October 1980,

The joinery closed in 1981, a short year after I got married. I was lucky to get work with Bord na Mona and I was over thirty years there until I retired in 2014. I had some great times with Bord na Mona and met some characters along the way. Many a morning the frying pan would be put on for the fry up and maybe someone was after catching and killing a fish that would be fried and served up for breakfast also.

After we married, Teresa and I lived in Clonaslee for seventeen years. We moved back to Lockclose, to my childhood home, in 1997. We have three daughters, Orla, Aisling and Rachel and three little grandsons, Diarmuid, Luke and Thomas. While in Clonaslee, I was involved in the fundraising for the Community Centre there, we would go house to house every week with a little red passbook and people would give us whatever they could afford at the time and gave it with heart so I can appreciate the efforts of the current Killeigh Community Centre Association in their fundraising.

It’s a great parish we have here in Killeigh, great schools and teachers, various sports clubs etc. I am on the Parish Pastoral Council and the two Christian Churches in the parish work very well together. The Annual Christmas draw is a lot of work but brings in much needed funds for the parish. We are lucky to have two great men Fr. John Stapleton and Msgr. Tom Coonan.

It’s great to see a committee working so hard to build a community centre for the people of Killeigh on the Macra Hall site and I wish the Killeigh Community Centre Association the best of luck with their endeavours and to their lastest fundraiser, a raffle with a prize of a new three bedroom house in Enfield, Co. Meath valued at €355,000. It’s nice to think that there will be a facility where our grandsons might enjoy some of the activities his dear old granddad did years ago!